To describe MoonBase Commander as obscure is an understatement; back in its time, an online search for its name without Google would have the results pointing to so many other strategy games, while the phrase "MoonBase" itself would turn up little if anything substantial.
However, MoonBase Commander is not to be mistaken as a quaint and lovely title just because it is a little known independent game. This is a deceptively simple strategy game that challenges not only the mind but also finger reflexes, as well as factoring in a bit of the player's luck - for better or worse.
The phrase "MoonBase Commander" would elicit the thought that the player would be commanding bases. While this isn't very far from the designs of most - and many - strategy games at the time, "bases", of a sort, will be the only things that the player commands.
There are no mobile units to be bossed around maps and no harvesters to be sent to resource nodes/pools - only said "bases" to build, and build, and build. That is, if there is no opposition to worry about.
However, before elaborating about the competitive elements of the game, this review will touch on the backstory and gameplay fundamentals of the game.
If the story can be condensed into a simple sentence, it is that it is really an excuse to have players flinging buildings and munitions around like a game of marbles in the days of yore.
The game is set in a fictional future where Earth's natural resources have been exhausted. Driven by humanity's need for more, the eggheads of Earth invented the so-called "MoonBase" technology, which can apparently be controlled remotely by a single user, typically called the "Commander".
Said technology involves launching high-tech probes onto any prospective celestial body that can be mined hollow or made suitable for colonization; the probe will then transform into a device capable of manufacturing other devices like itself, and in turn launch these all over said celestial body, ostensibly spreading all over the latter like parasitic artificial fungi.
It didn't take long for greed to have the technology fall into the hands of up to four selfish corporations/factions, who wasted no time vying with each other for control of said celestial bodies, as well as weaponizing said technology so that they can destroy each other's MoonBases - again, not unlike colonies of rival fungi killing each other.
Despite the story having four factions, there is no really gameplay difference among the corporations that are NiceCo, DeWulf, System7, and Team Alpha. There are cosmetic differences such as different sprites for the nodes that the player would build and launch, changes in the aesthetics of the user interface and the voice-acting for the AI assistant, but otherwise nothing else substantial. The game can be played in single-player and multiplayer, for which the factions play no serious role other than to differentiate the players.
Every session with the game will have the player starting with a single device known as the Hub, which apparently can clone itself into other Hubs or modify these offsprings to be something else. The player will also have a pool of energy, the starting value of which depends on the scenario in play and any settings that the host player may have selected before the start of the session. The player will tap into this pool to create new devices, of which there are up to 18, which are further categorized into three categories according to broad definitions of their main functions. Different devices will also cost different amounts of energy.
In any case, the Hub will be the most important, largely because all devices, including Hubs, must be connected to at least one to be functional; Hubs themselves must be connected to at least two others, otherwise the chain of devices simply comes to a dead-end. Any device that had just been made is guaranteed to be connected to the Hub that it had been launched from.
Yet, a Hub can ever only be connected to so many other devices; the cords that connect these devices to their originating Hub may not cross any existing ones or touch existing devices. Otherwise, the device being launched will have its cord severed and the device terminated prematurely. New devices may not come into contact with existing devices either, or the same consequence occurs. Most of them have to be placed on flat ground as well, or they are otherwise lost. The player can select the orientation of the cords, but he/she will be hard-pressed to have any more than eight - if at all possible.
If a Hub is destroyed, any device that it has created is destroyed too, including any Hubs after it; a previous Hub in the chain will not be affected. This means that if opponents can locate the first ever Hub that a player has and destroy it, the player is simply taken out.
Such a game design can be unsettling to players who are more used to resilient bases; that players always start at fixed locations may add further to the apprehension at being susceptible to sudden and complete defeat via the loss of just a single device. The game even deliberately makes it easier to trace which Hubs created which by having light sources traveling across the cords, from the initial Hub to the devices in the ends of the chains.
However, all Hubs share the same sprite, and a player can obfuscate the location of the original Hub by building chains that are anything but linear - if luck doesn't have a nearby opponent landing a very uncanny shot. Hubs are also some of the toughest buildings in the game, and short of killing their preceding hubs, they can take more than one hit from munitions.
The gameplay is turn-oriented: a player takes a turn doing something (usually launching a device), then another takes his/her/its turn and so on. A player can also ever only launch one new device per turn, regardless of how many devices the player owns. (Of course, having no Hubs means that the player can no longer launch any - and also that the player has lost.)
This seems like a cookie-cutter standard of turn-based gameplay. However, the mechanic of turns are also tied into the mechanic of the Energy resource. A player can keep taking turns, at least until he/she/it runs out of Energy; he/she isn't likely to gain an infusion of Energy from one turn to the next. When this occurs, he/she can no longer take any turns, but the remaining players who still have Energy can continue taking turns.
The mechanic of taking turns has always been a game-balancing design meant to give every player a chance to act and react, so it is refreshingly interesting that MoonBase Commander will make use of the resource mechanic to give a resource-wealthy player a clear advantage over those who do not. On the other hand, an Energy-flush player can choose to skip his/her chance at a turn deliberately, taking no more turns until everyone else can no longer.
When everyone can no longer take a turn, the current "round" ends, and a new one begins. Every round will bring along an injection of Energy into each player's pool; this is always at a minimum of 7 points so that a player would never get himself/herself into a bind at the start of the next round. Players who have chosen to end their round deliberately earlier will be able to hoard their Energy reserves into this new round.
Players can obtain extra amounts of Energy, depending on how many Energy Collectors that they have and where these are located. Generally, the more Energy Collectors that a player has, the more income he/she gets. However, that an Energy Collector gives only 1 point of Energy per round while costing up to 5 points means that a player cannot keep laying down Energy Collectors every turn without damaging his/her defensive/offensive potential.
This is where so-called "Energy pools" come in handy. Every map (and by extension, every celestial body in the story) has pools of glowing liquid of various colours (which do not matter to gameplay). Plonking down Energy Collectors on these, i.e. such that the sprites for the Energy Collector overlap the visual representations of the pools, will give 3 Energy points per Collector instead of just 1. A crafty player who realizes this can attempt to cram as many Collectors on a single pool as possible, though there will always be the risk of newly launched Collectors accidentally hitting the existing ones and thus getting wasted.
There are some gameplay-balancing designs to prevent an Energy-rich player from becoming too powerful. No matter how wealthy a player is, he/she can ever only have a hard limit of 35 points of energy for any round, which is an obvious game-balance design decision.
Furthermore, when Energy Collectors are destroyed for whatever reason, they explode violently, thus taking out other nearby devices immediately; a chain of adjacent Collectors can all blow up in succession, so a player will have to keep in mind that being a pack-rat comes with such danger. (Also, destroyed Hubs can cause any Energy Collector connected to it to explode - and vice-versa.)
Such designs make targeting an opponent's economic infrastructure a very viable solution to defeating him/her/it, perhaps more so than many other strategy games that have base-building. However, Energy Collectors are as tough as Hubs, so taking them out can still be a chore.
Once a player has a viable economy running to give sufficient Energy for the next subsequent rounds, he/she/it can use these to create and launch other devices that do other things, as mentioned earlier.
An Offense device is like a weaponized Hub. Instead of innocuously launching things such that they land and occupy their destinations, an Offense device launches munitions instead. It is not as tough as the Energy Collectors and Hubs, but it will be the device that will be dealing out the most destruction.
It can launch up to seven types of munitions, from the mundane Bombs and Cluster Bombs (which are less powerful than regular Bombs but affect a larger area). The Missile is like a Bomb, but with less dependence on the player's ability to gauge the landing of munitions (more on this later); at the highest point of its trajectory, it will scan the surrounding and hit the nearest enemy target, if any.
An EMP is a less powerful Bomb, but has a secondary effect of disabling enemy devices for a single turn in a large radius around its landing location. Disabled buildings lose their functions, effectively becoming little more than paperweights.
Cords are not affected by any munitions, except Spikes. Launching these at cords do not sever them, but the Spikes instead split into two and travel up and down the cord, hitting the devices at both ends. Crawlers are munitions that can be fired onto anywhere, being completely all-terrain mobile explosives that can move indefinitely in a straight-line (parallel to its launch trajectory) until they hit something. They can be destroyed by other munitions, but have advantages like being able to move under water (which makes them very difficult to remove) and pass through enemy Shields, as well as not triggering any Anti-Air missiles (more on these shortly).
Finally, there are Viruses, which can be the most destructive of munitions. Despite not being able to do much damage, Viruses indefinitely disable affected devices, and can even spread up cords (though it cannot go back to previous parts of the chain) towards other devices. Most importantly, infected devices project lines-of-sight for the attacking player, giving him/her/it valuable intel on the make-up of the enemy's chain.
Viruses are virtually impossible to stop without resorting to measures that effectively cauterizes the victim's chain of devices from further infection. To balance the disruptive potential of viruses, they cost a lot of energy to create and launch.
On the other hand, the disruption can be very serious, and there can only be so much a player can do in a single turn to control the damage, i.e. there may be potential gameplay imbalance with Viruses. An onslaught of Viruses can often doom a player, if they can be pulled off.
All devices have armor points, which are effectively their available hitpoints. Damaged devices can be repaired by having a Hub launch one-off Repair devices and landing these on their sprites.
Of course, a player would have no need to perform repairs if he/she/it can prevent munitions from landing and dealing damage in the first place. This is achieved by erecting defenses and scouting devices to spot incoming attacks.
The Anti-Air device is mainly meant to stop enemy devices and munitions from landing too near it and any nearby device that it protects. However, they fire missiles of finite speed; these are fast, but more often than not they will not be able to interdict munitions from landing on targets at the edges of their radial range (which is quite large, fortunately). Furthermore, the Anti-Air device can only fire once before requiring the owning player to be handed his/her/its next turn, upon which it reloads. This means that an opponent can "disarm" an Anti-Air device by having it expend its missile, and then other opponents can exploit the opening.
The Mine is a device that is meant to deter enemy expansion towards the Mine. Unlike the other munitions, it is launched by a Hub, thus allowing the latter to have some measure of self-defense against encroaching enemy devices (especially the Crawler). The Mine has a small detection radius to detect and interdict any incoming device, including those that are still in their launch trajectories. When it detects devices that move into sensor range, it will blow up in a radius that is slightly larger, dealing considerable damage to the trespassers.
Unfortunately, despite the high-technology that has gone into it, the Mine has a busted IFF programming; it will also explode on friendly/player-owned devices, which means that regions seeded with Mines effectively becomes a no-go region for everyone until the Mines are removed.
The Shield generates a force field that protects it and any other device (friend or foe) underneath it from any incoming munitions and even devices (which are instantly vaporized if they hit the force field). The Shield appears to be more reliable than the Anti-Air device, in that it does not disarm itself when it triggers its effects. However, any opposing device that manages to get under the field will have a field day at taking shots at the Shield and anything else nearby, though this is a very rare occurrence (especially without having disabled the Shield with EMP or Viruses).
The Tower is a device that is only useful if the fog-of-war mechanic is enabled; it opens up a huge area in the fog-of-war. Otherwise, it is a paperweight that curiously is not disabled together with the fog-of-war mechanic if the latter is turned off. Of course, it has the trait of being tall, and thus able to impede the launch trajectory of any projectile that crosses it (causing the latter to hit and possibly damage the Tower), but this trait works against both the player and opponents.
The Balloon is an alternative scouting device. Unlike Towers, or any other non-munition devices, it is completely free of any cord, and will stop at the apex of its launch trajectory and float there. Other than being a device that opens up fog-of-war, it serves little other purpose than floating around. However, it does have the accidental ability of being able to screen other devices from missile attacks, as missiles tend to go after them instead because they happen to seem nearer to approaching missiles. Being cordless, it can also be hit by other munitions, if their trajectories bring them towards the Balloon.
The Bridge is a device of miscellaneous function, as it is only useful in maps that have bodies of water, which cannot accommodate both devices and their cords. The Bridge is practically a terrain modifier, changing bodies of water into solid ground, albeit one that can be easily destroyed with any explosive munitions (together with any cords and devices that they support). Their fragility makes building across water a very risky endeavour, and only useful for maneuvers conducted in relative secret.
(The phrase "relative" is used, because the bodies of water are ever static in any map and thus wise players can always assume that there may be sneaky attacks coming from that direction.)
The Reclaim device is meant to be launched at unwanted devices to remove them from the map and recoup the energy spent from launching them (but not the turn expended). In an amusing twist, it can also be used against individual enemy devices; while it lacks the ability to affect multiple enemy devices, it can potentially recoup its energy cost if it manages to land a hit.
With such designs that render a variety of devices available to a player from the start of a session (not including the single-player Challenges) and thus simplify gameplay a lot by removing the need for any build strategies, MoonBase Commander may seem like a simple game to play if compared to other strategy games at the time. However, their very different functions make not one device appear to be an upgrade over another - with perhaps the exception of the rather debilitating Virus - and encourages the player to put thought into his/her next decision.
Yet, although MoonBase Commander may appear to be a game meant for players with high capacities for strategic planning, it did not turn out completely so due to the inclusion of irretractable gameplay mechanics that require reflexes and a bit of luck.
Despite the canonical high-tech stuff that had gone into the conception of the MoonBase, the player does not have complete and immediate control over the distance that devices can be launched across. A "power" meter of sorts represents the rapidly oscillating power that would be invested in the launch; the player must depend on his/her reflexes to get the indicator on the meter to stop at the right power level - hence, the reference to games of marbles at the start of this review. (Of course, other players may use some other analogies, like virtual golf.)
In other words, this is not a game for players who have hand-to-eye coordination problems.
For those who do not, they will notice that there isn't any way to know the trajectory of a device being launched; he/she will have to play the game long enough and launch enough devices to eventually gain the experience needed to gauge where the devices would land and where the apex of their respestive trajectories would be. Of course, a moment of panic would be enough to ruin a player's aim - and plans.
Furthermore, as experienced and deft as a player is, he/she will have to contend with limited time to make a decision on what to do when his/her turn comes. The single-player segments of the game may provide the player with lots of time to mull over this, but multiplayer matches almost always have timers that prevent players from stalling.
The timer even gets shorter for each turn that a player can take in addition to the number of turns that the other players can take in a given round. Such a design is meant to balance the game by reducing the advantage of Energy-rich players, but more limitations on the Energy mechanic would have been preferable instead of limitations on other game mechanics.
Such cut-backs on the time that could have been spent on forward-planning may not please the more meticulous of players. Of course, a player can make plans during other players' turns, but this is only viable if he/she is not facing immediate threats that require their full-time attention. Nonetheless, such game designs have the benefit of somewhat bridging the gap between the more impulsive players and the more deliberate ones.
The minor factor of luck mentioned earlier comes in the form of wind. Much like the wind mechanic in the Worms games, they affect the trajectory of devices after they have just been launched. This can pile on more pressure on the player to quickly make a gauge of where launched devices would land. Fortunately, wind directions and intensities only change from turn to turn, i.e. they won't alter while a device is in flight.
A player has only himself/herself to blame for disastrous launches if he/she did not consider the details of wind before-hand, but a player can get lucky from having favorable wind that allows them to perform launches that could not otherwise be performed, such as bending the trajectory of devices and the laying down of their cords when they land or throwing further than the maximum power level can normally can.
Conveniently, the factor of wind can be toggled off if players would rather not have the wind giving such random advantages to players, as do the timer. However, there is no toggle for the power meter mechanic.
This game is certainly not for players who insist that the gameplay for turn-based strategy games should be mainly dependent on cerebral prowess.
For players that can tolerate or dismiss such misgivings, they will find that there are more nuances in the game designs than are apparent. For example, the game reminds the player that he/she is fighting on a planet by allowing he/she to launch projectiles off-screen; the projectiles will appear at the edge of the map opposite to the one where they have gone out of.
MoonBase Commander is perhaps most fun in multiplayer, where up to four players (who take on the personae of the corporations mentioned earlier) join a match and attempt to take out each other. Players can also form teams (of two), but otherwise there does not appear to be any other way to play multiplayer.
There is a feature to play on LAN, but unfortunately, the game does not make it easy for a player to find an opponent online. Originally, the game could be played online via GameSpy, though the support is no longer. There is no browser to detect external servers hosting games, forcing the player to resort to third-party utilities, often made by fans of the game. The team chat tool is also clumsy, especially when players of the same team attempt to share messages with only each other. In fact, players will probably have to play the game in windowed mode, just to use external chat software.
Of course, if a player would rather play alone, there are two game modes for this: a skirmish mode that is not much different from a multiplayer match except played with bots, and the Challenge mode.
Skirmish mode lets the player play against AI-controlled opponents, which can be set with up to 10 different difficulties. These difficulties are genuine, that is, they actually use AI algorithms of different complexities instead of artificial buffs like enhanced resource incomes or lower costs for devices for AI players.
In Challenge mode, the player takes on the role of the commander for one of the four factions and has to complete objectives as required by the current challenge. Most challanges typically require the player to eliminate an AI-controlled player, but such opponents may have advantages like already having a developed chain or terrain advantage, thus requiring the player to go for strikes at critical locations or circumvent inconvenient terrain in ingenious ways.
The only performance that will be measured is ever only the number of turns and rounds that the player takes to win the challenge; the player can win Bronze, Silver or Gold Medals, which are awarded according to how short the completion times are.
This can feel a bit shallow, especially if players can get a lucky break from having strong winds enabling a sniping shot towards the enemy's initial Hub, or the wind impeding shots such that the killing blow on the enemy is delayed for a few turns or into the next round, to state a few examples where the luck-dependent wind mechanic may mess up record times. On the other hand, challenges without wind are a purely cerebral matter.
Fortunately, the game includes some handy tools to ease the playing of the game. These include features to allow the camera to automatically track devices that are in flight within the player's fields of view; these features are handily located on the interface for the mini-map. There are also features to send the camera back to where the player was looking at before the tracking features kick in, but these have to be accessed from the Options menu, and not a convenient location such as said mini-map interface.
The game easily allows the use of third-party maps, which can be installed as easily putting them into the right directory.
The graphics of MoonBase Commander have the advantageous excuse of the game being set on planets inimical to life; the bulk of the maps are bland-looking, as such planets would be. Of course, depending on the map in play, there may be terrain features like rugged hills and more bodies of water than a player would want to deal with.
Otherwise, the maps look simple and clean. However, this is a good design decision, as they have tremendous contrast with the devices that players can launch and the cords that they are attached with. Unlike the maps, these are crisp and well-detailed, complete with different sets of aesthetics for the different factions. For example, NiceCo, being a stereotypical extrapolation of Japanese design and manufacturing culture, has sleek, shiny and curvaceous surfaces for their devices.
There are also different themes for the user interfaces of different factions, though of course these are just for cosmetic effect.
As for graphical effects, there are not much to see beyond explosions, smoke coming out of damaged devices and the various light-shows that the different devices and their cords make; the maps are mostly static. Nonetheless, such scarcity of graphical effects somewhat helps players identify where the devices are, as well as reduce distractions.
On the other hand, there are some glitches to be had with the graphical effects. The most apparent example is that in sessions with fog-of-war turned on, smoke from damaged buildings can be seen through the fog, thus allowing players to exploit this to launch munitions - especially the Crawler - at targets that they aren't supposed to be able to see.
The only voice-overs in the game belong to supposedly AI assistants that would inform the player of any pending decisions that the player will have to take, as well as the consequences (good or ill) of any decision and any other occurrence that the player should know about, such as encroaching enemy devices. They are plenty satisfactory function-wise, though any entertainment to be had from them would eventually wane away as the lines start to repeat.
There are few soundtracks for the game; there is one for each faction and it is meant to portray the themes of that faction, such as electronic music for NiceCo, but there is otherwise nothing remarkable about the music designs for MoonBase Commander.
To summarize, MoonBase Commander is not exactly a strategy game for those who would rather have success be decided completely by strategic planning. However, its designs give it a high degree of accessibility that levels the playing field between players with inclinations towards elaborate plans and those who would rather play a quick session, which is a rarity in the strategy genre, and its mostly tight gameplay designs prevent it from feeling too shallow.